Do you know what I thought of when I read this book? Dressed, the podast about the history of fashion. And I was reminded that I prefer reading to listening, not least because you can insert pictures into a book.

As the title says, Great War Fashion is about what the women of Britain war during the first World War. The book is divided into various chapters, each focusing on one topic such as underwear, hats, corsets, makeup, washing clothes, furs, etc. By weaving descriptions of clothing and women’s accounts of what they wore and how they felt, the book manages to give a well-rounded account of how the status of women changed and how fashion responded to those changes.

The best part of the book has got to be the pictures. It’s pretty hard for me to visualise how something will look just from a description, so the pictures of reproductions and photos from that era really helped in my understanding.

I also really liked how fashion was explicitly linked to women’s status, such as in the fight for the right to vote (did you know that suffragettes used clothing to infiltrate places they might not enter otherwise?) and how people viewed women doing work during the war. It’s a good reminder that clothes are more than what people wear – they can be a response to and a reflection of the challenges women face during a particular era.

Overall, I found this to be an interesting history that takes a pretty unique view of the first war. Women’s history is too often overlooked (I didn’t even study this during my history class and we covered WWI) so this book provided an accessible way for me to learn more about the issues and changes that were facing British women during the first World War.

Featured Image: Photo from Canva